Guinness

For bar and pub tenders, Guinness has devised a different 'two-part' pour to achieve the ideal draught. GUINNESS GUIDE FOR POURING A PINT FROM A BOTTLE. First ...

[Tech Insider in 2018](https://www.businessinsider.com/pouring-guinness-all-wrong-glass-bubbles-2018-5?r=US&IR=T), he said: 'Every Guinness is supposed to be poured into a specially crafted tulip glass. In response, Anna MacDonald, Category Marketing Director Beer at Diageo GB said: 'A beautiful, great tasting pint of Guinness Draught is served using our famous 'two-part' pour. A bulk of that time is the settling. So that's why you see the sinking bubbles in Guinness with the small bubbles, which get carried down by the currents,' he added. Guinness explains: 'Pour slowly in one single go, the bottle shouldn’t touch the glass at any stage. But this time period is as much about marketing as it is the physics.

To mark Saint Patrick's day, we sent the long-suffering Archie Brydon on a quest to find the best Guinness in London.

The kitchen is right in the middle of the pub, and they chef up some [fantastic courses](https://thecowlondon.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/THE-COW-MENU-OCT-2020-1.pdf) that go perfectly with a side of Guinness. The Sheephaven Bay pub is on one such road, without any of the fanciness and the surrounding houses. A proper old pub with an Irish flavour, they unsurprisingly do a top tier Guinness, and the one room space is a great place for a pint in town. The inside is small and in places a bit cramped, and I did find myself having to really swirl my pint to maintain the head, but if you’re in search of an immersive celebration of Guinness, there is nowhere in London that can really match Soho’s The Toucan. [The Cow](https://thecowlondon.com/) is one of London’s best pub restaurants. Its walls boast some of the impressive literary and poetic minds to have frequented There are three Guinness taps and the broody goodness is served in an old-school glass, without the indentations. The fact remains that not all Guinnesses (or Guinnae) were created equal, and in a city like London, the gulf in quality between a good Guinness and bad Guinness is particularly pronounced. The pub has a quality that you simply couldn’t engineer if you tried. While one is enough, seven never hurt, and there’s a reason Guinness has become the staple offering of pubs across the world. What a lovely little corner of the world this is. From there, they have fostered an environment conduicive to Guinness consumption, treating it as a delicacy, and pairing it with both food and atmosphere befitting of this lofty rank.

In the spirit of St Patrick's Day, I had my first taste of the Irish stout beer.

The amount you get when ordering a pint has always had me irked by my subconscious preferences as it seems like you get way more for your money in comparison to when buying a spirit with a mixer. Nortons bar was the first of the Irish bars I went to and where I tried my first Guinness. This didn't seem to stop enthusiasts as the two bars I visited in [Digbeth ](https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/all-about/digbeth)were full of those commemorating the occasion with a drink. It's bitter taste reminded me of strong coffee with virtually no milk but the actual taste wasn't comparable to anything I've had before. I'd anticipated my taste buds being met with an intense flavour on my first sip but after I came to terms with the bitterness, there wasn't anything else that felt too out of the ordinary. It reminded me of the texture of a milkshake - I love milkshakes, but I tend not to order a milkshake in a bar and definitely not an alcoholic one anywhere. I've tasted a few beers before but have never found one that I liked, so trying keep an open mind through all of this was a struggle. The Guinness pint I bought today was £5.80 and the plastic container they gave me it in was almost the size of my head and full to the brim! One of those traditions being drinking a pint or two of Guinness. As expected, the bar areas were very busy and I appeared to lack the luck of the Irish as the moment I got to the front of the queue, the bar staff were required to change the barrel of Guinness as it had ran out. [I tried kebab and chips for £3 at the 'Best of British' chippy in Birmingham and I was surprised](https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/tried-kebab-chips-3-best-26296293) [St Patrick's Day](https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/all-about/birmingham-st-patricks-day-parade) parade in the city, I wasn't able to catch any of the usual outdoor festivities as it had been rescheduled and moved to an alternative location.